[Feature Request]: WiFi connection via TCP to Meshtastic

[tb0hdan]

OS

iOS

Description

Hi,

It is not possible to connect to Meshtastic via WiFi from iOS, but Android has such feature.

APP version: 2.0.10

[garthvh]

Android and iOS are different platforms with different developers and philosophies so there will never be feature parity between the two.

I have done some refactoring to support multiple connection types, but it is pretty far in the backlog. Maybe will look at it again in a year or if the state of ESP32 wifi improves.

[ut3uku]

It is a very important function of the app. I am waiting for it

[garthvh]

Closing in favor of #368

[geeksville]

This issue has been mentioned on Meshtastic. There might be relevant details there:

https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/macos-app-ip-support/8100/4

[PatrickHuetter]

+1

Another option could be to develop a ionic app with some parts native. That would decrease the development efforts. The typescript services could also be re-used in the web based Meshtastic client.

[garthvh]

I estimate it will require 25K in dev time minimum to refactor the whole code base and add this feature, have made this the first feature with a bounty available.

[AssetBurned]

for people following #506 and #550 and not using discourse.

[basementbuilder17]

i am also looking for this feature. Only access to iOS, really would like to manage all my nodes from there.

[meshtastic-bot]

This issue has been mentioned on Meshtastic. There might be relevant details there:

https://meshtastic.discourse.group/t/use-ios-meshtastic-app-to-radio-via-wifi/12232/5

[powersjcb]

I don't see this documented anywhere, but one additional reason this feature would be particularly helpful would be to enable dev work using iOS Simulator. Lack of support for Simulator requires anyone wanting to work on this to setup the appropriate Apple Developer Membership so they can self-sign the application for use on their own phone. (costs $100 per year) TCP would allow devs to host a TCP server setup to respond with test data or to proxy traffic from a real node.

Being able to develop the app over a local network would be a nice to have, but at the same time there's probably some positive tradeoffs of devs using the exact setup 99% of clients will utilize. (BLE)

Definitely concur with @garthvh that this is a "large" rework. (its at least needing to touch 3-4 layers of abstractions)

Incase anyone else is interested, I'm attaching some links to the Meshtastic-Android source that already implement this.

• BluetoothInterface.kt
• TCPInterface.kt
• RadioInterfaceService.kt
• StreamInterfaceService.kt - used for TCP and serial

[Hude06]

I'm down to work on a type script Capacitor JS (The new Ionic) app for it, Something similar to the flutter multi mesh app but try to reuse some of the web version. Is there a JS api already?

[garthvh]

Entirely swiftui

[drewzh]

I'm down to work on a type script Capacitor JS (The new Ionic) app for it, Something similar to the flutter multi mesh app but try to reuse some of the web version. Is there a JS api already?

There is and I'm already working on a PWA/Capictor Angular app. Already have nodes list, map and messaging.

[cpatulea]

[New to iOS development, new to Meshtastic - I might say something stupid] How would iOS TCP connection work? As far as I know, iOS is very aggressive in putting apps to sleep, so long lived TCP connections almost never work. For example it's almost impossible to run an IRC client natively on iOS, it's almost always through a server side proxy.

Maybe this could work using HTTP REST (like the web client) and the Meshtastic device buffering messages until iOS wakes up. But notifications could never work, so user would have to "manually open the app" to receive any messages.

[edit] Some links I found:
https://discord.com/channels/867578229534359593/874835141145542716/1271616546082652340
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/685525

[Hude06]

Hey, Drewzh is it on github? I would love to check it out @drewzh

[drewzh]

Hey, Drewzh is it on github? I would love to check it out @drewzh

I'll share when the time is right. It's on GitHub, but private. Once I get things working smoothly I'll make it public. I don't like pushing anything half finished or broken, which many things currently are.